Tag: Talking points? crossword clue

Bill’s time: 10m 01s

Bill’s errors: 0

Today’s Wiki-est Amazonian Googlies

Across

1 Peak of early 2000s cinema : BROKEBACK

“Brokeback Mountain” is a 2005 movie about the romantic and sexual relationship between two cowboys, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. Matt Damon was asked to play one of the leads but declined. Damon gave the excuse, “I did a gay movie (The Talented Mr. Ripley), then a cowboy movie (All the Pretty Horses). I can’t follow it up with a gay-cowboy movie!”

10 Martin Sheen’s first name at birth : RAMON

Martin Sheen is the stage name of actor Ramón Estévez. Despite all of his great performances, Sheen has never even been nominated for an Academy Award. Isn’t that something? I thought he was outstanding in his starring role in television’s “The West Wing”.

15 Doesn’t honor : RENEGES ON

To renege on something is to back out of it. It’s a verb commonly used in card games like bridge and whist. A renege is when a player doesn’t follow suit, even though there may be a card of the suit led in his/her hand.

18 Actor Max von __ : SYDOW

Max von Sydow is a Swedish actor who is noted for his appearances in movies filmed in several European languages. He has appeared in movie with dialogs in English, Norwegian, Danish and Spanish.

22 Rank aboard the Enterprise: Abbr. : ENS

Ensign (ens.)

The USS Enterprise is a starship in the “Star Trek” universe (pun!). There have been several generations of starship with the name Enterprise, starting with the vessel numbered NCC-1701, which appeared in the original TV series. My favorite “Star Trek” series is “Next Generation”, which features USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D.

23 Turbine blade : ROTOR

A turbine is a machine uses the flow of a fluid (sometimes air) to create rotational work. Simple examples of turbines are windmills and waterwheels.

25 Moved, as a movie camera : DOLLIED

A dolly is a small platform on rollers, especially on a movie set. Apparently, it is so called because it’s supposed to look like a doll. No, it doesn’t. I don’t believe it …

27 “Claws” star __ Nash : NIECY

Niecy Nash is a comedian and actress who played Deputy Raineesha Williams in the comedy show “Reno 911!” Nash is one of the celebrities to have participated in the reality competition “Dancing with the Stars”, taking fifth place in the tenth season.

“Claws” is a comedy-drama show that first aired in 2017. It’s all about a group of five manicurists who branch out into organized crime.

40 British boxer Khan : AMIR

Amir Khan is an English boxer who is a former light-welterweight world champion. Prior to turning professional, Khan won a silver medal for boxing in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He was only 17 years old at the time.

41 Album info : LINER NOTES

These days, the term “liner notes” is used for the informational booklet which comes with a music CD. The original liner notes (also “sleeve notes”) were the informational text printed on the inner sleeve (“liner”) of a 12-inch vinyl record.

43 Talking points? : ROSTRA

A rostrum (plural “rostra”) is an elevated platform, particularly one for public speaking. The original rostrum was the platform used by public speakers in the Forum of ancient Rome.

45 Role for which Liam got an Oscar nod : OSKAR

Irish actor Liam Neeson got his big break when he played Oskar Schindler in the Spielberg epic, “Schindler’s List”. Neeson was in the news some years ago when he lost his wife, actress Natasha Richardson, in a tragic skiing accident in 2009.

52 IPA, say : ALE

India pale ale (IPA) is a style of beer that originated in England. The beer was originally intended for transportation from England to India, hence the name.

53 About 5, for coffee : PH LEVEL

As we all recall from chemistry class, a pH of 7 is considered neutral. Anything less than 7 is an acid, and anything above 7 is a base.

57 Humanities degs. : BAS

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

The academic studies of human culture are collectively called the humanities. Subjects included in the humanities are languages, literature, philosophy, religion and music.

58 Enjoy a season in a day, perhaps? : BINGE

I’m a big fan of binge-watching, the practice of watching perhaps two or three (even four!) episodes of a show in a row. My wife and I will often deliberately avoid watching a recommended show live, and instead wait until the whole series has been released on DVD or online. I’m not a big fan of “tune in next week …”

62 Run onstage? : EMCEE

The term “emcee” comes from “MC”, an initialism used for a Master or Mistress of Ceremonies.

65 Duty for the bereaved : ESTATE TAX

To be bereaved (also “bereft”) is to have suffered the loss of a loved one.

Down

1 Patch plant : BRIAR

“Briar” is a generic name describing several plants that have thorns or prickles, including the rose. Famously, Br’er Rabbit lives in a briar patch.

4 Pabst dispenser : KEG

Pabst Blue Ribbon (PBR) is the most recognizable brand of beer from the Pabst Brewing Company. There appears to be some dispute over whether or not Pabst beer ever won a “blue ribbon” prize, but the company claims that it did so at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The beer was originally called Pabst Best Select, and then just Pabst Select. With the renaming to Blue Ribbon, the beer was sold with an actual blue ribbon tied around the neck of the bottle until it was dropped in 1916 and incorporated into the label.

6 __ noire : BETE

“Bête noire” translates from French as “black beast”, and is used in English to describe something or someone that is disliked.

7 Gobi locale : ASIA

The large desert in Asia called the Gobi lies in northern China and southern Mongolia. The Gobi desert is growing at an alarming rate, particularly towards the south. This “desertification” is caused by increased human activity. The Chinese government is trying to halt the desert’s progress by planting great swaths of new forest, the so called “Green Wall of China”. The name “Gobi” is Mongolian for “waterless place, semidesert”.

9 Apt eye rhyme for “bread” : KNEAD

An eye rhyme is a similarity in spelling between two words that look like they should rhyme, but are actually pronounced differently. So, for example, wood “looks like” food, but the words sound quite different. Eye rhymes are sometimes found in older poems. Because the pronunciation of words has changed over time, an intended rhyme may not exist today.

11 2019 Emmy nominee Adams : AMY

Amy Adams is an American actress, although she was actually born in Vicenza, Italy while her father was a US serviceman stationed on an Italian base. My favorite Amy Adams film so far is the outstanding “Julie & Julia” in which she acted alongside Meryl Streep. I highly recommend this truly delightful movie.

13 Polar environmental concern : OZONE HOLE

The polar vortices are two persistent cyclones that are found over the Earth’s poles, one over the Arctic and one over the Antarctic. It is within the southern polar vortex that we now have a hole in the ozone layer, but there is also a depletion of ozone taking place in the northern polar vortex.

26 Looney Tunes surname : LEGHORN

Foghorn Leghorn is a lovable rooster who appears in “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” cartoons from the forties through the sixties. Foghorn’s marvelous voice was provided by the great Mel Blanc. The rooster’s demeanor was drawn directly from a character called Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician who appeared regularly on radio’s “The Fred Allen Show”.

29 Contents of some 20-Across : CHAI
(20A Holders of leaves : TEA BAGS)

Chai is a drink made from spiced black tea, honey and milk, with “chai” being the Hindi word for “tea”. We often called tea “a cup of char” growing up in Ireland, with “char” being our slang word for tea, derived from “chai”.

34 “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very __ is an act of rebellion”: Camus (attributed) : EXISTENCE

Albert Camus was a French author, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Sadly, Camus died in a car accident just two years after he received the prize, at only 46 years of age.

44 Sri Lankan currency : RUPEES

The rupee is a unit of currency used in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. The term “rupee” comes from the Sanskrit word “rupya”, which once meant “stamped, impressed” and then “coin”.

The island nation of Sri Lanka lies off the southeast coast of India. The name “Sri Lanka” translates from Sanskrit into English as “venerable island”. Before 1970, Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon, a name given to the country during British rule.

47 Send to cloud nine : ELATE

I don’t think that anyone is really certain of the etymology of the term “on cloud nine” meaning “elated”, but I do like the following explanation. The 1896 “International Cloud-Atlas” was a long-standing reference used to define cloud shapes that was based on a classification created by amateur meteorologist Luke Howard some decades earlier. The biggest and fluffiest of all cloud shapes (and most comfortable-looking to lie on) is cumulonimbus. And you guessed it, of the ten cloud shapes defined in the atlas, cumulonimbus was cloud nine …

49 WWII sub : U-BOAT

The term “U-boat” comes from the German word “Unterseeboot” (undersea boat). U-boats were primarily used in WWII to enforce a blockade against enemy commercial shipping, with a main objective being to cut off the supplies being transported to Britain from the British colonies and the US. The epic fight for control of the supply routes became known as the Battle of the Atlantic.

51 Cape Ann’s county : ESSEX

There are five counties named Essex in the US:

• Essex County, Massachusetts
• Essex County, New Jersey
• Essex County, New York
• Essex County, Vermont

Essex County, Virginia

Cape Ann is located 30 miles north of Boston and is on the northernmost edge of Massachusetts Bay. The Cape was first mapped by the explorer John Smith. Early in his adventurous life Smith had been captured and enslaved by the Ottoman Empire. His “owner” in his days of slavery was a woman called Tragabigzanda, and apparently the slave and owner fell in love. Smith originally called Cape Tragabigzanda in her memory, but King Charles I changed the name to Cape Ann in honor of his own mother, Anne of Denmark.

55 Rapper Lil Uzi __ : VERT

“Lil Uzi Vert” is the stage name of rapper Symere Woods from Philadelphia.

56 Singer Franklin, Aretha’s elder sister : ERMA

Erma Franklin was an R&B and gospel singer. She was the elder sister of Aretha Franklin. Erma toured with Aretha for a while, and even recorded backup vocals on her sister’s big hit “Respect”.

59 Opal, for one : GEM

The largest opal ever found, and the most valuable, is the Olympic Australis. It was discovered in South Australia in 1956. That same year, the Summer Olympics were being held in Melbourne so the newly discovered stone was given the name “Olympic Australis”.

61 Suffix with salt : -INE

F. L. Sommer & Company of St. Joseph, Missouri starting making wafer thin soda crackers in 1876. The crackers were later marketed as Saltines, due to the baking salt that was a key ingredient. The company subsequently lost trademark protection of the term “saltine”.